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Any development news for TSM will be posted here! Posts will contain things like recently added features, announcements for new beta versions, what is coming in the near future, as well as general TSM-related news / commentary.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Explanation of Destroying Buttons and Modes

Hopefully I can help explain the method behind the madness of the 2 clicks and what the different modes do. I have talked about this a bit in the past (will update with link once I find the thread...). But, here goes a complete explanation using milling as an example (it's the exact same with prospecting and even disenchanting).

There is two parts to milling a set of herbs (by set I mean 5 of an herb - 1 mill's worth). First you have to cast the spell (/cast Milling), and then you have to "use" the item (/use Whiptail). The traditional macro and every addon I've seen works the same way. They do both steps in the same instant. This is definitely the most reliable and easy way to do milling but is definitely not the fastest.

There are a few things to note that effect milling. You can't do the /cast while the loot window is open. However, you can do the /cast before the loot window opens and the highlighted cursor which is waiting for you to /use some herbs won't go away when the loot window does open.

You can do the /use step while the loot window is open. What will happen is that IMMEDIATELY after the looting is complete, the next cast will begin. With the macro, there is some delay after the looting is complete before the next cast will begin. I'm not 100% sure myself what is causing this delay although I have a few theories but either way, it's there. So, this is what normal mode does. The button will enable for the /cast step once Milling is off cd and then once the loot window opens, the button will enable itself again for the /use step. This will give you a definite increase in overall milling speed and will work very consistently.

The "Faster" mode takes advantage of a very short window in which you can do the /cast and it will start casting while the loot window is open rather than just being delayed until the immediately after the loot window closes as normal mode does. This window is a few tenths of a second before the loot window opens. If you are too late, you get the same effect as with normal mode. If you are too early, the spell will get interrupted when the loot window opens. Just right and you will cut a very significant chuck of time off your milling. The button will enable for the /cast step when the cooldown is up just like normal mode. But. it will enable for the /use a arbitrary amount of time after the cast finishes. This amount of time is essentially just a guess on my part and will almost certainly be too early. However, if you can figure out a rhythm where you can get the /use right in that time window, you can train yourself to have a good sense of when to hit it.

In conclusion, I'd recommend using normal mode if you just want to spam the button while watching TV and get through with your milling / prospecting. I'd recommend using "Faster" mode if you'd like to get through the milling as fast as possible even if it takes some practice and requires more of your attention to pull off. Also, I would agree that having a mode that just does the typical old-fashioned macro approach might be a good idea for those who don't want to have to spam their buttons as much and don't care about speed.

4 comments:

To be specific, the timing for being able to cast while looting the previous mill, is that tenth of a second as the gcd completes, but before the cast finishes. If I'm paying attention and want to be done quickly, I watch my quartz cast bar addon, it has a GCD spark, as well as a latency indicator on the cast bar (the reason the time varys).There are 2 reasons it fails often however, sometimes the looting takes too long, either because of lag or rare pigments or both, and also if you've watched your bag, the last mill of a stack, that last herb in the stack stays in the bag a split second, so if you're going for fast, it targets on that herb, but after the cast finishes tells you invalid target. (using the macro.)

Will your addon fix that problem? Also I was hoping for a fire n forget type addon... But it's all good, if I'm not needing to pay attention you can alway just have Mouse Machine click the button for you. It's hardly botting imo, its just doing what blizzard should let you. I'm s'posed to actually sit here and target each and every stack of herbs 4 times x hundreds of stacks of herbs to make a single trinket? Screw that, I'm against botting but I love Mouse Machine for milling at least.

Yes destroying does everything for you. All you have to do is click the button. If you're just mindlessly clicking and you don't mind clicking twice per mill, I'd suggest "Fast Mode". If you want to try and get the timing right for even faster clicking...use "Faster Mode".

It does seem to smart target better instead of targeting ghost of the last stack like a simple /cast/use macro.

Odd numbers of herbs still cause a problem however, it glitched out when I had a a couple single herbs and was spamming back and forth between them, it wouldn't stop even when I closed tsm and my bags, it was bugged in a loop going back and forth between them.A /reload fixed it though. Just like using the macro I guess the ez fix is to make sure all stacks are multiples of 5 before you start.

Thanks a million for all your work! TSM has made me go to back to actually using my professions, it just makes it so easy, especially Enchanting, Jewelcrafting, and most of all, Inscription!